The federal government spends more than $80
billion annually on IT, and according to some estimates, more
than 70 percent goes to maintaining legacy systems, which leaves
only a fraction to fund next-generation systems.
That formula keeps legacy systems running, but it also ex-
poses them to potential disaster as the costs of maintaining those
systems inevitably mount and budgets for new investments are
squeezed. The resulting zero-sum game tends to keep the govern-
ment from adopting new systems aimed at the latest priorities
and requirements.
In September 2015, Mark Ryland, chief architect for Amazon
Web Services’ worldwide public sector, warned lawmakers of the
risks they were taking by funding older systems. He was testify-
ing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Com-
mittee’s IT Subcommittee.
“That’s a lot of money,” Ryland said, adding that it was “no
longer acceptable for such amounts to be spent on technologies
geared toward preserving legacy systems rather than on applica-
24
GCN JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 • GCN.COM
Can software
quality tools shrink
IT and software managers
have begun experimenting
with ways to identify
and minimize less-than-
optimal coding to avoid
expensive fixes down
the road
BY PAUL McCLOSKEY
technical debt?
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